I’ve seen Ten Meter Tower twice, most recently as part of the Sundance Shorts event at the Wexner Center in Columbus. I liked it even more the second time.

Ten Meter Tower (2016) is a short study of people who are trying to decide whether to jump off the high dive for the first time. It’s a simple, universal concept — I think everyone has experienced the kind of conflicting pressures this film portrays.

The directors paid people who had never been up on the high dive before to climb up and walk to the edge of the platform. From there, we watch them decide whether to jump or climb back down. There’s pressure from the fact that the camera is watching; sometimes there’s another person present, and there’s pressure from them. There’s obviously fear involved in the decision as well — the platform is very high.

It’s interesting to see who jumps and who doesn’t. (I know which category I would fall into.) The film is elegantly done, with humor and respect for the participants. It’s a charming film that evokes personal reactions from the audience — there was occasional laughter and applause on both occasions when I saw it.

I’m happy to join in with other authors local to the Columbus area at Gramercy Books’ Local Author Festival, Weekend Two! The event is on Saturday, August 26 and Sunday, August 27. I’ll be there from 10 am to 1 pm on Sunday. I’ll have copies of Color Mage and Sword of Jashan, as well as two anthologies, available for purchase and signing.

Gramercy is a new independent bookstore in Bexley. After talking to the local authors, please check out the store as well!

There’s a new independent bookstore in Columbus — always something to be happy about! Gramercy Books has apparently been open since December, but I didn’t know until this week.

And Gramercy Books, a pleasant store with an attached cafe in Bexley, also now has signed copies of my two fantasy novels available.

There are a few other independent bookstores here, including the local treasure The Book Loft, but this is the first one to open in a long time. Here’s a link to an article from the Columbus Dispatch about a resurgence in sales at independent bookstores.

The Dingle Peninsula is in County Kerry. It’s the farthest west you can go in Ireland. It’s a place of steep cliffs dropping into the sea, sandy beaches, and green pastures dotted with a lot of sheep. There are archaeological ruins, including ogham stones and Dunbeg Fort, an Iron Age promontory fort built right above the sea. We were blessed with warm weather and sun our first day, then rain and a blast of wind the following morning.

One of many views from the Slea Head Drive on the Dingle Peninsula. July 2017.

The Slea Head Drive is a circular route around the edge — in some places the very edge — of the peninsula. It’s traveled in a one-way manner in a clockwise direction, because the roads in some places are narrow enough they won’t fit two cars. If you do encounter someone going the opposite way, one of the vehicles must back up until there’s a wide spot. This happened twice while we were there, once while we were a few feet away from a low stone wall on the edge of the cliff. That was unnerving. I’m glad I wasn’t the driver!

There were a few bicyclists as well, on what must be an extremely demanding ride.

A seagull at Slea Head.

Inch Beach. It has a surf school — see image below.

Dingle Town itself (An Daingean) — permanent population about 2,000 — is crowded with tourists in the summer. It’s got a harbor with a permanent dolphin resident named Fungie. We didn’t take a boat trip to see Fungie, but his statue is in the town center, so we feel we know what he looks like. Fungie was first seen in the harbor in 1983, and is known for being friendly to humans. Is it still the original Fungie? Here’s a link to a story in the Independent on that subject.

Part of Dingle harbor, July 2017.

Dingle Town itself is the base for tourists wanting to explore the region. In spite of being a Gaeltacht, a place where Irish is the official language, English is commonly spoken in town. The Gaeltacht was created to preserve the Irish language. I’m told schoolchildren from around Ireland spend time here in the summers, learning their native tongue. It seems the use of Irish is declining, though. Here’s a link to a 2008 article discussing the challenges of trying to preserve the language.

Paudie’s Bar, Dingle.

Murphy’s Pub, Dingle.

In July, Dingle was full of flowers. Fuchsia, in particular, bloomed everywhere.

And below, a last look at the green hills of Ireland. The sheep had mostly been shorn when we were in Dingle. Many were marked with blazes of color — bright reds, blues, greens — so the owners could distinguish their own sheep when it was time to retrieve them again from common fields on the mountainsides.

Update 07-01-2017: Sorry I won’t be able to make this book-signing, since I’m not feeling well. Looking forward to another time, I hope.

I’ll be part of a local author book signing and sale at the Poland Library on Saturday, July 1. This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County. It runs from 9 am to 1 pm that day.

This event is in conjunction with the Celebrate Poland weekend. The event will be held at the Poland branch of the library, 311 S Main St, Poland, Ohio.

If you’re in the area, stop in and say hi! I’ll have both of my fantasy novels available, and the Locothology and For the Road anthologies as well.

This should be a post about writing, but it’s not! Instead it’s about my visit to the Stephen F Udvar-Hazy Center, which is part of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. This is a separate facility from the one on the National Mall, located near Dulles Airport. And it’s full of amazing things, even for someone like me who doesn’t know much about aeronautics or space flight.

There are two huge hangars for display of hundreds of spacecraft and planes, as well as windows looking into the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar. The Concorde is there, as well as a variety of vintage passenger and military aircraft, a U-2, and space-related items like a Sojourner Mars rover.

There are plenty of historical exhibits relating to space flight, including early capsules, a SpaceLab module and Mars rovers.

That old logo, though. 😝

Android built in the sixties to help NASA develop spacesuits. Very early sci-fi.

This delicate-looking thing is a Tracking and Data Relay satellite.

“Sky Baby”. A piloted aircraft that is only 9 feet long.

Langley Aerodrome A, 1903. Not a success, but looks very steampunk.

Another picture of the Langley Aerodrome. Samuel Langley was a physicist, astronomer and aviator. Buildings, an Air Force base and various aircraft and ships have been named after him.

The Enola Gay is also at Udvar-Hazy. The Enola Gay is the aircraft that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. It’s one of the many military aircraft that are at the museum, a reminder that the history of aviation and space flight is about exploration and science, but is also inextricably linked to war.

Colossal is a psychological drama and a monster movie. There’s some magical realism in there. I’m really not sure of the odd mix of genres that make up this fascinating movie. But is that a bad thing — a movie that doesn’t fall into a predefined market niche? Not in this case.

Anne Hathaway gives a powerful performance as the movie’s main character Gloria, who’s in trouble. Addiction to alcohol has destroyed Gloria’s career and gotten her kicked out of her boyfriend’s apartment. She returns to her childhood home, where she meets up with an old acquaintance and starts work at his bar (!) while she tries to figure out what’s next.

Meanwhile, across the world, a huge monster appears, terrorizing the people of Seoul, South Korea as if we were in a Godzilla movie. Gradually, Gloria realizes this creature’s appearances have something to do with her life on the other side of the world.

It’s at about that point that I suspended disbelief and went where the movie took me. Which was a really winding path that surprised me several times.

This movie is imaginative, chilling, rewarding. It’s full of metaphor, and yet it’s very real and immediate. It handles lots of issues — alcoholism, bad relationships, and self-empowerment — but it always stays entertaining.

Jason Sudeikis’ performance as Oscar is brilliant and downright frightening. And I’ll leave the description at that! The best way to see this movie is to just go and enjoy.